Alice in the Kitchen

Fruit Bouquets

Have you seen heard of fruit bouquets?

They are the new, hip version of the “cookie bouquet,” and you can purchase them all over the place. I think they are super cute, but they are off-the-charts expensive! I’m talking $100 for $15 or $20 of materials. All you need to make your own is listed right here:

• one pineapple
• one honeydew (not too ripe)
• one cantaloupe (again, not too ripe)
• a quart of strawberries
• a bunch of grapes, any kind
• one flower shaped cookie cutter (I used two)
• skewers and toothpicks
• a sturdy pot/basket/bowl to hold your bouquet, fitted with a piece of styrofoam on the interior

Now have at it!

This isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s messy and tedious and requires patience. I will give you a couple of notes:

1. Don’t dip your fruit in chocolate! A lot of the fruit bouquets that you can buy at a florist or online will include chocolate dipped fruit. The reason why I don’t suggest doing this is that fruit is wet, and if your chocolate dipped fruit gets wet, it will ruin the look of the chocolate, plus the chocolate can run onto other fruit.
2. Many people use kale/parsley/lettuce to fill in the sparse looking areas of their baskets. I didn’t here because I think it looks a little tacky, but if you feel like your skewers are too visible, use some filler!
3. Experiment with other shapes – pineapple also looks cute in heart shapes, for a bouquet like this.
4. Bigger really is better – fill in as much as you can! Grapes are easy to skewer and take up space so go overboard!